Have you ever heard of a honeymoon registry? Couples often provide friends and families with wedding registry information, but this usually fails to cover honeymoon getaways. In fact, roughly half of all couples postpone honeymoon plans because of the cost or the inability to take off from work. Fortunately, Honeyfund provides a solution to this problem. It is a honeymoon registry platform providing couples with the means to make their honeymoon dreams come true!
Humble Beginnings as a Honeymoon Registry
According to Bold Business’ exclusive Synapse Summit interview with Sara Margulis, who founded Honeyfund with her husband, Josh, the concept arose from their own wedding experience. Through a simple website “registry” that Josh created, they collected more than $5,000 in honeymoon funds. Entrepreneurs at heart, the couple launched the company not long after as an online honeymoon registry platform. “Our wedding guests were so enthusiastic about what they had just done,” Sara describes, “They really wanted us to make it happen for other couples.”
Honeyfund basically works as a crowdfunding business where friends and families contribute funds toward a couple’s honeymoon registry. As Sara puts it, “We like to call it crowd-gifting rather than crowdfunding.”
Of course, the registry can collect funds for other things besides honeymoons. Wedding gifts, down payments, and charitable donations are just a few items often funded through a honeymoon registry. It didn’t take long for the Margulis’ to realize Honeyfund and its honeymoon registries were going to be a success.
How Does Honeyfund’s Honeymoon Registries Make Money?
First of all, Honeyfund is completely free to couples. Without fees or costs, couples sign up for a honeymoon registry page with it and customize their wish list. It provides links to universal gift registries and gift cards for honeymoon travel or other items. It also provides a free webpage where couples can provide details about their wedding and honeymoon. Guests then visit the couple’s Honeyfund honeymoon registry site and fund the items they choose from the couple’s wish list. The Honeyfund “funds” are then placed in the couple’s honeymoon registry account for future use.
With these free services, how does Honeyfund make money from its honeymoon registry platform? Some revenues for it come from cash transaction fees. If guests give cash through Paypal or WePay to the couple’s honeymoon registry, Honeyfund receives a percentage. It also has partnerships with several retailers and travel companies (including Target) that provides some revenues as well. Lastly, couples can pay Honeyfund a one-time “upgrade” fee to customize their honeymoon registry site with enhanced designs. So far, Honeyfund’s strategy has proven quite successful.
The Shark Tank Experience
With tremendous growth and success, Honeyfund needed to take the next step. The honeymoon registry platform already has attracted thousands of people. In fact, it had captured more than a third of the honeymoon registry market in just a few years. But to grow, the company needed major investments. The Margulis’s, therefore, approached the celebrity investors on Shark Tank to give their honeymoon registry business a chance to excel. The decision turned out to be just the right move.
With offers from three of the Shark Tank experts, Sara and Josh decided to go with Kevin O’Leary’s proposal. O’Leary has helped the couple strategically position themselves for ongoing success and helped them manage growth needs. In fact, it recently relocated from San Francisco, California, to Clearwater, Florida, because of its expansion. As Sara explains, “We needed to hire and hire pretty quickly, and that was very difficult to do in the shadow of Silicon Valley.” Honeyfund relocated to Clearwater in 2017 and has continued to grow its honeymoon registry business significantly.
Looking Ahead for Plumfund
With room to expand in their new Clearwater location, opportunities for Honeyfund’s growth seem limitless. One such growth opportunity for the company involves its new project, Plumfund. Like Honeyfund, Plumfund provides a free, crowdfunding platform for visitors to the site. But the funding possibilities that Plumfund provides are much broader. “Plumfund has really expanded over time into all kinds of crowdfunding,” Sara explains. “Baby and birthday funds, anniversaries, hardships, tragedies, and memorials are commonly funded on Plumfund.”
Honeyfund’s honeymoon registry services continue to allow couples to create the enchanting experience they desire. With most couples spending nearly $5,000 on their honeymoon, the company provides an inexpensive way to have that perfect, romantic getaway. And with new opportunities for “crowd-gifting,” Honeyfund is likely to enjoy even greater success. Indeed, Honeyfund’s future looks quite bright.
Champion of Women in Business and Tampa Bay
Sara Margulis is an advocate for women in business and is active promoting nationwide. Her passion for entrepreneurs is electric as is he desire to help women entrepreneurs raise money. This is clearly evident in this exclusive article from Bold Business providing advice to women in business on how they can raise money.
Sara and her husband Josh made the unlikely decision to move her thriving company from the Silicon Valley to Tampa Bay, Florida. While this may surprise many, it was a strategic move for her company.
Sarah Margulis, Co-founder and CEO of Honey Fund shares, “We really started to look at the possibility of moving the company here. And we did some research and we made the leap in 2017 and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We’re hiring so much faster than we could in Silicon Valley.” In fact, Entrepreneur cited the region as #2 in competing with Silicon Valley for Tech entrepreneurs and is the number one region in the country for women in business to flourish.
